Tuesday, July 28, 2009

I'm BAAACK, hope you've missed me!

Seems I've been MIA from my blogging for so long. Sad to say, I took a week's vacation from work, only to have hurt my back. So, most of the vacation the week before last was spent in physical therapy and lying with ice on my sore spots. Then when I returned to work, I had therapy three nights that week along with trying to get some junk together so that my daughters and I could host a garage sale. (no blogging time available) Garage sale over, whew, when I returned to work on Monday, yesterday, I was only there a few hours and started feeling chilled to the bone. Complete with nausea and body aches, I started running a fever. I went home barely able to keep my eyes open. I crashed on the couch, hot/cold all afternoon, sleeping and tossing/turning to keep up with the body aches. The temp outside was a muggy 80 some degrees and sometime in the afternoon, the electricity went off. I kept hearing a beeping sound, from far off in the distance, when through the fog of my fever induced sleep, I realized it was the battery of our smoke detector shouting out to me that there was no power.

The afternoon turned into muggy hot evening, and the power didn't come back until about 9:30 at night. I wouldn't have known, so deeply I was sleeping, but my wonderful husband came to check on me, forcing me to take some acetaminophen for the fever and turn on the T.V.

I didn't go to work today, for fear that I wouldn't recover if I didn't truly get some rest.

Seems I'm always sick or broken some how. It gets pretty discouraging. Seems I spend more time recuperating than I do living life. No matter how hard I try, no matter how healthy I try to behave! I hate being off work!
There's always so much to catch up on when you return.
But, on the brighter side, I've been able to blog hop and read some of my favorite blogs! Susan had a heartwarming post about mother/daughter relationships. Seems that I'm not the only mom who has shed tears at the tough times parent/child relationships have. That makes me hopeful!
Also, the eye candy my daughter Sarah provided made me chuckle. As always, Susannah at Petunia Face cracked me up, although I was sad to see that I was left off her blog roll. (I bet that was an over sight, no scratch that I hope that was an over sight.)

Blogging is a fun past time, but sometimes it's hard to keep up the reading and posting and all. I truly enjoy the peek into everyone's life and love when they peek into mine!
Here's to everyone having a great Tuesday! Sick or well!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Memorabilia or junk?

When I was a little girl, I used to ask my mother what was I like when I was a baby? She sometimes told me a funny story or two, she sometimes said she couldn't remember.
It was the "couldn't remember" part that bugged me. That and the fact that I had only a handful of pictures of myself to chronicle the first 7 years or so of my life. No cute newborn pictures, in fact the first picture they took of me was when I was around 7 or 8 months old.
My older brother, well, that's a different story. They had pictures of their first born (natch). His baby book was filled out for a few years...mine had my basic first days of life information. Date of birth, weight, family tree...that's about it.

I have always been accused of being a "pack rat". I saved letters from my pen pal, kept flowers from an old boyfriend pressed in a book. I saved ticket stubs and match books and all sorts of memorabilia but I eventually let go of those memories and tossed all of that stuff.
To this day, I struggle with organized clutter. Oh, my home is neatly decorated, the clutter controlled into a artful montage. But still I have a hard time letting go of gifts, clothes and pretty things. So when my daughter suggested a garage sale and I told her I didn't have much to contribute she rolled her eyes. "I can go into your kitchen right now and fill a box with things you could sell or give away". I began to purge.

My oldest daughter and my youngest daughter (my son is the middle child) came over on Monday night with the attempt to tackle the trunk where all the memento's of their childhood (and mine) has been carefully tucked away. I saved my diaries from 5th, 6th and 7th grade. They conjured up many laughs from them, and quickly they tossed it into the garbage. They tossed all the Front Page newspapers that I kept for them, telling of the new Princess across the ocean and then years later of her death. They laughed until they had tears in their eyes over the stories that they wrote in first and second grade, of the lists that they mailed off to Santa and of the funny pictures that their brother drew, complete with date and age marked in the corner by me, the thoughtful watchmom of their youth. I saved everything, but apparently I wasn't alone, as there was also some momentos that their grandmother (on their father's side) had saved of his youth and babyhood, stuff he forgot to take when our marriage split up. Probably stuff he forgot about, stuff that didn't matter anymore. Never fear, I'll save it here! and then I did. All to preserve their memories. I thought that they would thank me someday. I thought that they would relish this junk and be thankful for the reminders. So that one day, when I forgot, the junk could tell the stories that I could not.
They tossed it all away. The locks of hair, the misspelled stories and poems, the home made Mother's Day cards and the Front Page news of John Lennon's death.
I was beside myself. I fought back silly tears. I felt as though I had been working on a very large gift that took me twenty years to complete only to find out that the recipient thought it ugly junk. I choke up just typing about it.
I let the trunk and it's content go out to the garbage pick-up.
Assuaging my hurt feelings, my husband reminded me gently, "who did you save those memories for my dear? You or the kids?" I thought about it. I think it was a little of both. I think I wanted a reminder in case I forgot. In case I forgot their sweet words, in case I forgot that twenty plus years goes by so fast. But you don't forget. I still see their Kool-Aid smile faces and their sticky hands when I look at their 30 plus faces. I still hear their sweet little voices inside their 29 year old deep ones. The memories have not been hidden away. I can conjure them up if I try. My husband tells me to let that junk "go". Let it go and live in the now.

How many of you hold on to those kinds of things? How many of you keep junk around as keepsakes? How many of you think I should have scooped up stuff and held onto it awhile longer? Maybe when they are older still they might wish they would have it back?

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Scary Places to Visit on a Friday Night

Did you ever think how normal places you may visit can be considered the scariest depending on your frame of mind?
Take last night. Friday night, ending a miserable work week, the prelude to my week of vacation. A vacation just from work, where people were bugging me. (seriously buggin me)

I had an order for Physical Therapy clutched in my hot little numb hand. Left work and the whiny incompetents behind anticipating relief from the back pain and the start of my vacation.

Let's just say that the demeanor of the tiny little soft spoken physical therapist was a sham. She led me through a chamber of horrors on her narrow little exam table. Pushing soft tissue in an ever so slow pressure that resulted in little spasms that made my shoulder jump every six seconds ALL ON IT'S OWN! Cool, way cool, but then it felt as though she were ripping my spine from inside it's muscular hideaway. Push, twist, prod and release. Until the knots that were once my twisted ligaments and muscle were now fighting back with the twitches and jumps. The numbness went away temporarily. She performed deep heat ultrasound and some more advanced pressure in key locations on my neck, trapezoidal area and lower spine.
Hey! Does this spell R.E.L.I.E.F???
Well, it did. For awhile. Then she taped my spine. Yeah, TAPED it. From my neck to midback, two strips running either side of my spine. This is to remind my posture to stay straight, to remind me to sit up and toss my shoulders back to relieve that pull from the adhesive. Weird feeling. I felt as if I were a young Joan Kusak in 15 Candles (remember her character - the girl at the dance/drinking fountain, the one with the scoliosis brace??? Loved that movie - saw it 400 times in the 80's and 90's)
So, with my nerdy posture, I scheduled 100 or so more appointments (yes, even on my vacation) because my back is truly a knotted mess and has been for a few years. Years I put off dealing with it, because of the more pressing pain the TN gave to me. (Are you getting the fact that I'm wearing a trans dermal pain patch - um, I should be feeling NO pain, and yet that back pain has broke through....must be kinda bad pain, I guess)

I decided after I left to go to the grocery store on my way home. That way I wouldn't have to disturb any pool time or day trip I would make on my vacation with annoying trips to the store.
ha!
I don't know why my car turned into Super Walmart, but it did. Convenience I suppose.
Let me just say that Super Walmart on a Friday night after 6 o'clock is truly a mecca for the unknown.
I saw a young mother with a too tight tank top showing her rubber tire of belly fat over the top of her too tight Daisy Dukes who had blue hair. Well, it was died blue over the already black hair that her gene pool gave to her (I assume). I saw a midget. I saw a Marine. I saw a Hindu Princess, complete with scarves and veils and little dangled coins lining the edges of her floor legnth wrap. I saw a few Farmer In The Dell type men, with their overalls and t-shirts. I spied a few over 55 yrs. old men with gray streaked, long, long pony tails, waiting in line reading US Weekly. While I pondered over the grapes (green or red? you choose..) my cart was pushed aside by a young Asian family who at my count had seven children (Jon & Kate wanna-be's) all of whom wanted to jump into my cart. With my strange posture, I fit right in. Ahhh, Super Walmart, the only store where I can dress like Halloween 24-7 and not feel out of place.
Truly scary.
The rest of my evening I spent fighting the urge to slump. This in going to be really interesting!

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Scootch Over You Inconsiderate Boob! I need to rest.

I hurt my lower back. Probably staining the deck in anticipation for the 4th of July party that we were having.
It rained. We used the garage instead.

Don’t you hate it when you hurt your back (lower back) and EVERYTHING you do hurts?
Hurts to sit, to stand, to lay down and when you reach for something, OH, OUCH!
When I have a hurt, then I get cranky.
I’m moaning today because of inconsiderate people. Mostly work people. My tolerance (related to my achey back) is low for inconsiderate people today.
1. Install a roll of towel paper YOURSELF people! Instead they come to find me, their germy, wet hands dripping on my desk. “Jackee, there is no paper towel in the staff lounge”.

2. Whoever used the last of the copy paper – fill the darn machine will you chumps?
Why fry the coffee pot when there is a minuscule amount of old coffee in it? Either turn off the pot or make a new pot!

3. Where are all the forks? We are fortunate enough to have a well stocked kitchen for our staff lounge. I used petty cash to buy a place setting for 8 and some odd extra stainless steel forks for the kitchen. THEY ARE ALL GONE! Not in the dishwasher, not in the cabinet drawer. Just gone. Please don’t eat the forks folks.

4. Last summer I loaned a co-worker (one that is now my boss) a few odd books in the Janet Evanovich series of books about Stephanie Plumb…I loaned her # 6 and #7 out of FIFTEEN. She told me today that she threw them away. Is there a lesson here or what?

I could go on being cranky and listing all the other things (injustices really!) that have been on my last nerve today, but I’ll reserve my thoughts for better, more positive ones.
Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve blogged. I miss you guys and hope you’ve missed me! I’d lie and say that I’m really too busy anymore to blog, but that’s not the case, I’m just lazy these days of summer. Seriously, if I do sit down, I conk out! Wake me from the dead type conked out. I hope your 4th was eventful and safe. I hope that everyone is watching their diets (I’m down 8.4 lbs. !!!! Watch out Valerie Bertonelli!!)
Hope you all aren’t near as cranky as I am today.